Tories and policy!

[Frosty149]

What it demonstrates is that- as the charts LK posted show quite clearly- highly educated young people cannot make a valid risk: benefit analysis with regard to their own future.

"Vote for me and get free money! But I'll put the country £45 billion further in debt to do it! FREE MONEY!!!"

So he got the votes. (Regardless of the shoite Tory campaign). Regardless of the future in front of that section of the electorate who voted for £25k NOW and then another two decades of stalled interest rates and cutbacks to the public services that would eventually occur.

In this case education and the ability to make quality judgements are not linked- because the physiological development needed for those judgements has not yet happened.

Don't disagree, but, there are highly qualified and experienced people who fall on all sides of every political divide...
Modern economics is the oft overlooked quality IMO.
Politics is politics but economics is much more empirical.

 

[Craiglxviii]

I should really do some analysis of this...

OK. I did some analysis.

Firstly we have to be careful to understand the difference between DEBT (how much we owe) and DEFICIT (when spending exceeds income).

Government parties are shown along the top. Blue = Tories, Yellow = Liberal, Red Labour and Grey = Coalition/ National.


Debt skyrocketed from ~30% of GDP to around 180% due to the Great War. It stayed that way through to 1934 thanks to the effects of the Great Depression; reducing thanks to huge efforts made by the Coalition government. Debt then spiked again thanks to the Second World War peaking at 230% of GDP in 1947. Attlee's and then the various Conservative governments instituted and continued very stringent austerity policies aimed at drawing down that debt and were largely successful; by the time Thatcher gave way to Major the national debt had reached the same % of GDP that it had been just prior to the Great War. It climbed under Blair, reduced under Brown and then peaked again as a result of the Global Financial Crisis. It has started to reduce under the most recent Coalition and Tory Governments.



Same scale this time showing interest to be served on the national debt.



This is perhaps the most pertinent. The budget deficit. Anything below the horizontal axis is a budget surplus; any downward trend is a good thing. We can see that Attlee's government very sharply returned the economy to a surplus condition that was halved under the Churchill & other Conservative administrations of the 60s. The Labour government coming in in 1964 returned that surplus, the Heath government turned it into a deficit and it stayed that way through Maggie's tenure until major came in. He returned the surplus condition until the ERM Crisis hit. Major's government did sterling work in reducing that back to a surplus condition just in time for the Blair government to step in. He worked hard to put the budget back into deficit, Brown took over and returned it almost to a stable low deficit condition until the global financial crisis hit. The coalition government deserves much more credit than they get for reducing the deficit down to a near-zero condition as does the Cameron administration.

This can be seen more clearly in this chart.

 

[Craiglxviii]

Historically Labour do BUT:

They historically borrow more so have more to pay back
They historically raise Taxes (140+ stealth tax rises under Brown)
Historically run a greater deficit

Have a look at the charts Jon, they surprised me too. It's not nearly that simple.

 

[Frosty149]

Have a look at the charts Jon, they surprised me too. It's not nearly that simple.

Interesting charts Craig, I suspect though, when you look in parallel with other economic data the analysis may not be so clear cut? Inflation, interest rates, employment, exchange rates etc. Individually they may not be big factors, but collectively?
I'm not challenging the figures, more playing devils advocate!

 

[Craiglxviii]

Interesting charts Craig, I suspect though, when you look in parallel with other economic data the analysis may not be so clear cut? Inflation, interest rates, employment, exchange rates etc. Individually they may not be big factors, but collectively?
I'm not challenging the figures, more playing devils advocate!

I would need more than an hour for that level of overlay analysis..! What they do show however is the state of the economy by year regardless of internal factors. The overriding influences on the economy are external. Two world wars, the Great Depression, the ERM crisis and the most recent financial crisis. One after another and no sooner has one finished than the next comes along.

 

[Frosty149]

I would need more than an hour for that level of overlay analysis..! What they do show however is the state of the economy by year regardless of internal factors. The overriding influences on the economy are external. Two world wars, the Great Depression, the ERM crisis and the most recent financial crisis. One after another and no sooner has one finished than the next comes along.

No dispute from me!

Remember each party will assure you they were responsible for economic turn around or you never had it so good etc etc and cite elements of their budgetary spending whilst carefully 'overlooking' the less attractive areas, but then, that's politics, not economics!

 

[Craiglxviii]

Yes. What those charts show are the trends... one can see clearly exactly what Ted Heath's administration did to the budget surplus, turned it on its head, to show just one example.

 

[JBell]

Have a look at the charts Jon, they surprised me too. It's not nearly that simple.

Make really interesting reading that

 

[Big Cheese]

The problems in the steel industry can be traced back to Thatchers closing of the majority of the steel works in the 80's forcing most of the scrap processed into export to mill's in China,India & Turkey which in turn has caused the glut of cheap Chinese steel.
I would bet that Farages attendance record is no worse than many of our elected MP's in our own parliment.
The only time there ever seems to be anybody in there is for PMQ's on a wednesday.

 

[Craiglxviii]

The problem WITH the steel industry is that it resisted for decades getting into the very high value-add, technical steels end of the market. That meant that regardless of anything else, it was always going to come up directly against the mass Chinese mild steel industry and fail for what should be fairly obvious reasons.

There are a few, small technical steel mills (one recently opened up in Scotland) here that do really rather well. Germany took this decision and strongly supported ThyssenKrupp in changing its Ruhr Valley output to technical steels. They're now the world volume leader in this field.

Where would our industry be now if, instead of striking for higher pay back in 1981, the steelworkers unions had taken notice of what was happening in Germany and instead campaigned for a switch to higher value add production?

 

[Frontstep]

That I would suggest is a failure of management and government policy.

Should the unions now be campaigning for battery or fuel cells at JLR Toyota etc ?
I would think its "above their pay grade"

 

[Craiglxviii]

That I would suggest is a failure of management and government policy.

Should the unions now be campaigning for battery or fuel cells at JLR Toyota etc ?
I would think its "above their pay grade"

Failure of management definitely. Government policy definitely. The policy of not having a policy, definitely.

Toyota has a very thorough employee suggestion system, instituted by employees, that underpins their long term profitability through cost reduction by continuous design and process improvement for short, medium and long term ideas. It is most definitely not above their pay grade, it is the global benchmark for how to do such things. If only we as a nation could embrace that attitude!

Here is the book about it written by one of the founder members of the Creative Ideas group. It's a permanent feature on my desk for a reason.

 

[Frontstep]

On an individual basis employees particularly those with a knowledge of the subject are an important resource,
but Unions pushing for the future direction of a companies product ranges ????

 

[Craiglxviii]

On an individual basis employees particularly those with a knowledge of the subject are an important resource,
but Unions pushing for the future direction of a companies product ranges ????

The point with Toyota is that both the management and the unions support the employees in their continuous improvement efforts to improve both the product quality and profitability on a continuous basis (this word gets used a lot in Toyota). That is, the unions, employees and management recognised in 1951 (!) that they had to work together to a) stay in business and b) stay profitable.

The suggestions range from how to improve tool-setting processes, to styling direction of headlamps and swage lines, to upcoming technology adoption.

 

[LostKiwi]

I would bet that Farages attendance record is no worse than many of our elected MP's in our own parliment.
The only time there ever seems to be anybody in there is for PMQ's on a wednesday.

Farages record is the second worst of the MEPs. The only person with a worse record had a serious illness. Farage did nothing to help the British Steel industry (as already noted), abstained from votes on torture, abstained on votes on Womens rights, didn't vote on the humanitarian crisis in the Yemen, didn't vote on a protection for vulnerable adults, didn't vote on combating anti-semitism, didn't vote on Syria, didn't vote on Road Transport in the EU (which is something that could affect UK hauliers), the list goes on and on.
http://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-nigel-farage-2.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...own-tom-brake-liberal-democrats-a7119411.html
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/press-...fishing-makes-mockery-of-new-election-poster/

 

[Big Cheese]

But I still bet it is no worse a record than some of our MP's in Westminster.
We were,& probably still are one of the world leaders in steel production.
Cheap Chinese labour means that their product is always going to be significantly cheaper & only the imposition of tariffs can alter that.Leaving the EU means we can impose our own.
Just like Trump is trying to impose.
Steel stocks rise on speculation Trump administration's industry report will lead to China tariff

• Steel stocks climbed Tuesday amid reports the Trump administration could soon impose tariffs on foreign steel companies.
• The Commerce Department began an investigation in April into whether foreign-made steel imports threaten U.S. security.
• The department is expected to release its findings this week.

Evelyn Cheng | @chengevelyn
Tuesday, 27 Jun 2017 | 12:23 PM ETCNBC.com

 

[LostKiwi]

Whether its better or worse than our MPs in Westminster is to a certain extent irrelevant (though if we're paying them to do a job and they aren't it doesn't say a lot for our hopes post Brexit). The simple fact is he was the second worst of his peer group. If 700+ other MEPs can bother to turn up and vote why couldn't he? His failures to support the UK in the EU make it even worse, especially as he was crying all the time about how bad the EU was for Britain but was at the same time failing to do anything to help UK industries (steel, fishing, haulage).
The man is a waste of space and tax payers money with less claim to 'celebrity' status than Katie Price (who we don't pay for with our taxes!).

 

[JBell]

The problem WITH the steel industry is that it resisted for decades getting into the very high value-add, technical steels end of the market.